Photoshop for all round editing, Logo creator ,very nice and easy for beginers, Xara Web style 4 -another good all round graphic craetor and for general graphic making you have to see twisted brush..its amaizing in things you can do with it...

for beginners:

raster graphics: photoshop elements (paid), paint shop pro (paid), Gimp (free)
vector: Xara xtreme

Though, i would strongly recommend putting some time into learning photoshop and illustrator/coredraw as thats the way to go if one wants to do graphic design professionally.

colbyt, PS6 would be fine. The difference between PS6 or PSCS2 wont be apparent since you're only beginning.

thanks mate.. very helpful